"Farewell Address"
Dr. Schaft's Farewell Address
TO THE SYNOD OF THE
GERMAN REFORMED CHURCH,
LANCASTER, PA., OCTOBER 24, 1892.
Your address touches the springs of my heart, and revives the memories of my youth connected with my call to America.
I see before me your two delegates, Drs. Hoffeditz and Schneck, calling at my study in Berlin in the summer of 1843, and informing me that the Theological Professors of Halle and Berlin had unanimously directed them to me as a suitable person to fill the Professorship in your Theological Seminary at Mercersburg.
Their mission excited considerable attention by its novelty and boldness, and the prospect it seemed to open for the transplantation of German theology to America.
King Frederick William IV. invited your delegates to the palace, and showed his interest in your Seminary by the liberal gift of fifteen hundred dollars.
In-December I received your call from Winchester, Va., signed by the Rev. Dr. Berg, who was to be my chiet opponent.
In the spring of 1844 I left Berlin, was ordained at Elberfeld, in the church of Dr. Krummacher [who had declined your call], and spent seven weeks in London and Oxford.
What I saw and heard in England was to me a revelation, and prepared me for my work in America.
I met the leaders of the Tractarian movement (Pusey, Newman, Marri t, etc.), and formed in Oxford personal friendqa
ie ship with rising young scholars, as Stanley, Jowett, etc., who afterwards took leading positions in the Church of England.
After a voyage of forty days in a sailing vessel, I safely reached New York, in July, 1844.
There Dr. Wolf, the model of a courteous, kind-hearted, Christian gentleman, who afterwards became my colleague, met me, and accompanied me to Easton, where he was then pastor.
The next day Dr. Hoffeditz took charge of me, on my leisurely journey through East Pennsylvania, stopping at Kutztown, Reading and Tulpehocken with Rev. Dr. Leinbach, the father of three ministers, among my dear pupils.
The manners and customs of the people and the Pennsylvania German dialect were exceedingly interesting to me.
At Harrisburg I met the delegates of a convention between the German and Dutch Reformed Churches, and for the first time saw Dr. Nevin, with whom I was to be so intimately connected as colleague.
I was most cordially received and hospitably entertained by Judge Bucher.
On arriving at Mercersburg on the evening of the 12th of August, the students of the College and Seminary, in vague expectation of great things to come, surprised me, who had done nothing as yet, with a torchlight procession and speeches of welcome in German and English.
In October I was received into your Synod at Allentown and delivered my inaugural address on the ''Principle of Protestantism'? in Dr. Bucher's church at Reading in the German language, which some hearers misunderstood for Latin or Greek.
This address, which Dr. Nevin translated into English with an introduction of his own, became the innocent occasion of a long theological controversy.
A year after its delivery I was accused of heresy before the Synod of York, which was occupied for several days with hearing the charges and defenses.
Dr. Berg, who denied the validity of Roman Catholic ordinances and had shortly before re-baptized an Irish monk, occupied fully half a day in an eloquent popular argument to convict me of Roman-
izing tendency.
Dr. Nevin took another half day to disprove the charges.
I made a German address in self-defense, but as it was not generally understood I had to make another speech in broken English, which was much shorter but more effective.
So much for being brief and for speaking English.
The Synod, after every delegate had given his opinion, acquitted me with an overwhelming majority.
With such a record I thought I ought to venture upon the honorable estate of matrimony, and married a Mary from Maryland, but this is a private matter.
Then followed the development of Mercersburg Theology, so called, mainly by Dr. Nevin in books and through the Mercersburg Revzew.
In 1850 the removal of the institutions from Mercersburg to the more eligible location at Lancaster began to be agitated and resulted in the union of Franklin and Marshall Colleges of this city (1853).
The Seminary unfortunately was left behind in lonely isolation.
I served it ten years longer, hoping in vain for the removal to Lancaster, which was not effected till 1870.
During the Civil War Mercersburg was constantly exposed to ravaging raids of the Confederate cavalry.
After the battle of Gettysburg in July, 1863, the Seminary building was turned into a military hospital, for a thousand wounded Confederate soldiers.
In the providence of God I was soon afterwards assigned a larger field of usefulness in the Union Theological Seminary of that city.
But my affections remained with you undiminished.
I followed with interest your growth and prosperity.
And now, when I appear before you, I heartily rejoice in your bright prospects.
The Seminary and College are once more united, never to be separated again, and are steadily increasing in efficiency.
When I arrived in Mercersburg I found but few theological students; now you have sixtyfour.
Then you had but two professors, who had to
divide their time between the Seminary and the College; now you have five professors wholly devoted to the Seminary.
Then there was but one Seminary; now you have four.
Then there was but one Reformed church in Lancaster, one in Reading and two in Philadelphia; now their number there is sixfold and tenfold.
Your Synod, which is the mother synod, has given birth to half a dozen daughters in the South and the West.
Under such favorable auspices it is my rare privilege to meet your synodical assembly once more, and probably for the last time.
I thank you for your kind sympathy with my severe illness, which interrupted me in the midst of work.
In the kind providence of God I am so far restored as to be able just now to read the last proofs of the third volume of: my church history, which is devoted to the story of the Reformation in my native Switzerland, and the great labors of Zwingli and Calvin, on which the Reformed Churches are based.
I may look forward yet to an Indian summer, brief, but sunny and balmy, and I trust not unfruitful.
But whether one year or ten years may be granted to me yet, I shall never forget the memories of this day, and it is with profound gratitude that I bid you, my old and dear friends and pupils, an affectionate farewell till we meet again (to use the lines of my departed friend, Dr. William A. Muhlenberg, written in this very city, where he was then rector of the Episcopal church) in that land— Where the saints of all ages in harmony meet,
Their Saviour and brethren transported to greet; While anthems of rapture unceasingly roll,
And the smile of the Lord is the feast of the soul!